Salt Cay, again

I did an earlier post on our visit to Salt Cay, and it generated a lot of attention.  But people have been asking for more info, so I am going to go back over it and show you a few more photos and try to do a better job of describing it all.

South of Grand Turk are several small islands, or Cays, as they are called here. 'Cay' is pronounced the same as 'Key'. I have also heard the word 'quay' pronounced the same as 'key'. The country is the Turks and Caicos, so I guess Salt Cay is a 'Turks' island since its on that side of the Columbus Passage. Anyhow, we spent a few days on Salt Cay earlier this year staying with Jim and Sharon Schaeffer at their Windmills Plantation. I have posted a bunch of photos of their place in here earlier.

Salt Cay is the least inhabited island in the TCI. I think it's also the smallest one with any discernible population. There's not much there. A small sort of town spread out along a road where the old Bermudian salt merchants kept facilities back in the 1900s. I read that salt was basically the only real export from the TCI from the late 1600s until the early 1960s. This is more or less the "main drag" of Salt Cay. The old salt merchants houses were on the left side of the road with their own little docks. On the right side are the salt drying pens or salinas:

The salinas are still there in several areas on the island. Back in the day they would let the tide flood them then close gates to trap the water in while the tide fell. They had windmills that pumped the water from one pen to another so that the first one was ready to take on another load of seawater when the tide rose again. They would keep pumping the seawater into pens to let the sun evaporate the water out of it.

 The old trails are still there running along the walls between the pens. Some of the older ones were built by slaves the Bermudians brought with them.

There was a famous story written by one slave woman who was shipped here to work in the salt pens separating her from her family back in the mid-1800s, I think. Her story was used by the abolitionists in the UK to demonstrate how bad slavery could be.
(I am adding a link to a more modern article that goes into a lot more detail about Salt Cay here).

There are ruins scattered here and there on the island. Some of them are from around 1700. There are no bronze plaques, no tour guides, no historical markers. Things just slowly fall down and become overgrown. We were told that the population of the island is now down to 57 people. I think we met most of them. They get together at a little place on the beach called the Green Flash cafe in the evenings to eat fried chicken and drink beer. Its outdoor tables on the water by the little harbor. The Salt Cay dive operation is there. Those are good guys, too.

We were told this was the government center back when the island was busy making salt. The fenced yard was to hold cattle they raised for food to supplement the fish. I almost fell through the floor of this place walking around inside it. Some of the craftsmanship is superb. Mortise and tenon joints, pegs hammered into holes in huge beams. The low structure to the right is a cistern to store rain water. The front yard of the place is fallen to ruin, like everything else, but it's not hard to imagine what it was like during its heyday back when salt was rare and valuable to Europe:

You see scrawny cattle and mules descended from the imported animals from long ago. They are roaming loose here and there on the island. If you look at the photos of Windmills posted earlier you can see that the walkways around the little hotel are surrounded by fences. They are not to keep visitors in; the fences are to keep the cattle and mules out of the rooms. They will roam inside an open door for water or to munch on a book.

One of the old salt family's houses is being restored, slowly. Mostly funded by private donations. The cellars of these were once filled with salt, waiting to be loaded on ships. The White House (this one) was owned by one family for generations. They built the original structure from the timbers from the boat that they sailed here. Again, some of the old craftsmanship is pretty amazingly good. Next time, I will take more photos. I promise. I know there are some fellow woodworkers out there besides me. Boat people are like that. At least some of you who are as ancient as I am must appreciate proper joinery. Especially made in the days before power tools. It still amazes me to see these hand hewn and cut joints still holding together after over 200 years of tropical exposure and hurricanes.

Here's another view of the salt storage area of that old house. The fresh cinder blocks and square lumber are new - part of the restoration. The original cellar walls are native limestone blocks cut by hand from an old quarry on the island. The old rounded horizontal beam is original one of the masts from the ship that brought the family from Bermuda. It's been scraped and gashed by generations of black men with shovels moving tons of sea salt from the salinas into the storage through those doors in the wall, then out again when a ship was tied up outside, just a few yards from here. They would have been done offloading food and supplies and then would load up with salt for the long trip back to Europe under sail.

One shovel at a time, one mule cart at a time, one day at a time..one hard life at a time.

Long way from a relaxing Pina Colada at the beach at Club Med,huh?

Not much is left of the old windmills that pumped the increasingly salty water from salina to salina. Eventually the brine would end up in a very shallow one, all the water evaporated by the sun, and eventually become just a solid layer of salt crystals. The workers would scoop them up with shovels, load them into carts, and the donkeys would pull the carts along those narrow paths to the salt cellars.

These days ospreys nest on the old windmills:

And while the currently occupied houses on Salt Cay are still home to families that have been here for generations, they're having a problem keeping the young here.  There's just nothing to do on Salt Cay.  Basically, no future other than for a very, very few tourist oriented places like Windmills, the diving operations and some similar establishments.  The streets are pretty quiet these days.

I think our borrowed golf cart ( thanks Jim) was the only thing moving.

Well, that and the donkey.

People, aerial views of Pine Cay

Just got back from a 30-mile round trip on the boat over to Provo. Hadda buy a belt sander to finish some projects I am doing over here. Man, I got raped on the $$$ but what can ya do? We ran the boat pretty shallow today, since it was calm. My better half took some shots while I drove.

Here's the wake with the jackplate up and the tabs down. You can see how it 'squashes' the water down, instead of plowing it aside:



The dark blob's coral, about 2 ft. down. Water depth around it about three feet. The boats running pretty flat. Normally I run it bow a lot higher, better mileage. But more draft. Nuther



Naaah...I ain't nervous. heck, I missed that one to starboard by several inches.



Some decent houses along this stretch. This is the side of the island we chose to build on. Away from the busy, resort side. its peaceful, and remote.



Another broken up Haitian sloop. They are not built very well. I think they are held together mostly by paint and prayer, just enough to make one passage:



Mobile office, TCI style. (she was seeing if she could glom onto the marina's wireless from 900 yards away...and she can heh heh heh..)



Hey, here's TCI lawnmower...with Carbon Credits! BillyGoatGruf Inc.



The new house as of yesterday afternoon. We added the low wall around the patio as an afterthought. Original design had the patio ending flush at ground level. This view is from standing height on the dirt road between us and the water. The wall will deflect some of the constant breeze, and also gives a little more privacy. There is also some salt spray during storms, and the wall should help move the wind flow upwards over the house.

We decided to leave the end of that 'pergola' thing open, so I can add steps or a small landing thing there later if we want. The two yellow tanks are going to be buried for gray water, which will feed a drip irrigation system. The entire roof will be encircled by gutters that funnel rainwater into a double cistern that holds 18,000 gallons.



The crew expects to be installing doors and windows next.

La Gringa Suprema just read this thread for the first time. She says I should write more descriptions on some of the earlier photos, because some of them have a small story to tell. I have been trying to keep the word count down, but wanted to ask..do you guys want more descriptions of what was going on?

This is one she said I should have explained instead of just posting. This was not long after we got here. We were sitting outside at Gilley's watching the world and the boats go by. We didn't have a boat yet. People started showing up on the dock, getting into boats and leaving. First, a half dozen at a time. Then, a steady stream. All black people dressed all in black clothes. Black suits. Black dresses. Boarding white boats, and leaving on the blue sea. My memories of that day are all black, white, and blue.

It was for a funeral being held on North Caicos. A local developer/builder had been killed in a traffic accident late one night returning from a party. A young man, still in his 30's with a lot of family, a lot of friends. Well liked. A golden future. All gone.

Over the course of a couple of hours, people kept arriving, loading on boats in their Sunday finest, and departing for North Caicos. We watched several hundred people leave for the funeral in this way. It was quiet. Orderly. White shirts, white purses, and white smiles, of course, but not many of the latter.

Its about 11.5 miles by boat, and the boats would come back empty in about a half hour, and load up more. There had to be a dozen boats ferrying people, some just a few like this one, some with 20 people. All black and white. A reminder that some things in life have no gray areas.



Local frog sticker:



I thought I would put some people pix in here for a change. We have met so many people since we have been here. My wife had spent 15 years in NJ, and I had spent 20 years on Cape Cod, then two in NJ, before we moved here. We have ten times more of what we would consider good friends here, after two years, than we had in the Northeast US after 20. Maybe that says more about us than it does that part of North America. Not their fault that I didn't fit in.

I think that's part of it, we meet people here who have much more similar outlooks to our own. We met two other Texans here, yesterday, out of the blue. Totally unrelated to each other, too. One is passing through on a sailing catamaran, and lightning hit his boat, and he will be here weeks for repairs. The other one moved here a year and a half ago and is doing construction project management. He told us he and his wife love it here. We hear a lot of people talk about the heat here. Heck, this ain't nothin' to a good old boy from East Texas. It’s like Springtime. A cross between the Hill Country and Padre Island 100 years ago.

This is Derek. He is doing the finish plastering and stucco work on the house. He is from Freeport, a Bahamian who moved here. He is a San Francisco 49ers fan. He loves the house, says the breeze is so cooling and the location so calm, that the guys on the crew all find themselves taking naps in the shade at noon. We have found them like that, stretched out on the cool concrete, hat over their eyes, snoozing away. La Gringa Suprema says its like walking into a kindergarten class during naptime.



This is Bernard. He is from Haiti as are many others here. Bernard works at the marina where we keep a slip when on Provo. He's always smiling, always willing to help jump a battery, change a flat. He likes the dog. The JRT is different from the local dogs which are called ‘potcakes' like in the Bahamas. They are so laid back that they are usually horizontal. The Jack Russell is into everything, and very smart. I would trust Bernard with him.



This is "Preacher", one of our best friends here, crossing a tidal stream on Salt Cay. Preacher is one of the best boat handlers I have ever seen. His family is one of the oldest on Provo, and he has some tales to tell from back when the whole island had less than 200 people. No grocery store, no electricity, living on what they caught and grew in an area that now sells for over a million an acre. He has sea stories, too. Drifting for days without food and water out of gasoline in a small uncovered boat headed back from the DR. And stories I know he wouldn't appreciate me printing.

Preacher is developing a new $50M condo project on Provo, going through the planning/architect stage now. Keep an eye out for Tom Footerock Landing in the future.



And no, he isn't afraid of the cattle. We saw a hilarious home video of him and a cousin chasing down a cow they had bought to butcher, who got away and made a run for it. And made it.

This is from Windmills Plantation on Salt Cay. The little table in the gazebo is separated from the other tables in the outside dining area. Later that evening, a local couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary there, surrounded by candles, in a nice private setting overlooking the sea. The trade winds make a nice sound blowing through the Casuarinas trees. The waiter, Levi, is from South Africa, and every time he brought them another course, he would sing opera. In a variety of different languages, and he is really good at it. I'm no romantic, but I thought it was cool.

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The two pools are seawater, and gave me the idea of building a seawater pool at our new place. No chemicals, great buoyancy, and you just pump it through a sand filter and then back to the ocean. In my case, I would tap off the intake to make fresh water. Just an idea.

The man celebrating at the gazebo told us it was his second 25th anniversary, with his second wife. A couple days later we struck up a conversation with a local guy at a beach bar over on Grand Turk, and told him we had been at Windmills, and about Levi the African singing opera at a 25th anniversary. It turned out that he was the son of the man on Salt Cay's first marriage. Small world.

We took a camera, a pan and tilt unit, radio control, and a video downlink and attached it to a 6 ft. helium balloon. We ran it up a couple hundred feet, when the air was calm. This doesn't happen often, here.

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This is looking down Pine Cay in the foreground, across Water Cay, and that's Providenciales in the distance.



This is the landing craft making the turn into Pine Cay. Its how supplies are shipped around the islands



Another view over Pine Cay, looking essentially South. That's a fresh water lake, very rare here, in the foreground. The Caicos Banks, looking toward Hispanola.



The camera setup works pretty well, but we have a problem with wind. A spherical balloon is no good, the drag co-efficient of the sphere, and vortex shedding kills us with motion in winds over about 10 mph. We need a small helium blimp, like those Grand Opening car lot, advertising things, with fins on it. Needs about 3 cu. m. of volume, able to lift about a kg. If anyone has one lying around they ain't using....

This is the house on Pine Cay where we spend a lot of time. Its where we are right now. Very peaceful and quiet here in the summer, since its off-season. Some weekends last year, we were the only two people on the island.



We were playing with the camera controls on the balloon rig. With the video downlink, we can see what the camera sees using a small LCD on the ground. We can move the pan and tilt, compose the photo, even work the zoom, and trip the shutter, from the comfort of a shady porch. We put the whole setup on a 17 ft. Boston Whaler for some of the shots.

There are places here I really want to get low-level aerial photos, and if I can work out the kinks in the balloon system, it should work. We have a friend here, a pilot, who has been using radio-control helicopters to do this, and when it works, its great. But it has its own set of problems, especially here surrounded by salt water. Most of the best shots are from over the water. Well, you can see the implications. I think he is on something like his third or fourth helicopter, and they are not cheap.

These guys came over to the beach to see what the hell that balloon thingum was....



Crowded Pine Cay beach, as usual..



You can see the boats shadow on the sand bottom underneath.

Handling a six foot balloon in this boat was a real trip. With the new Andros, it should be easier, but first we need to buy a different shaped blimp for the wind. I want to take photos of some of the uninhabited small cays, some homes, some new resort developments, and mostly some ruins that can only really be appreciated and seen from the air. Low level aerials are tricky. Airplanes are too fast. Helicopters are too expensive, very obtrusive, and neither is supposed to be within 500 ft. of people or homes. Balloons are quiet. And they float.



Just getting a cylinder of helium from a machine shop on Provo out to this island is a day's adventure in itself.

Salt Cay

In early 2007 we spent several days on Salt Cay. Its a small island south of Grand Turk, "all the way" across the nation from here (70 miles). Salt Cay has a history. And unlike many of the islands here the Salt Cay history is actually documented.  Well, to some extent.  It was once forested, and has a natural series of 'salinas', which are low tidal areas that flood with the tide.

The old salinas and the hand built stonework walls and dikes are still here.

 People discovered that with some engineering, they could use this geography to evaporate seawater to the point where they were harvesting sea salt. In great quantities. It was the major industry in these islands for many, many years.

We took a quick look inside one of the old salt baron houses, called The White House.   This one is being renovated.  I think it takes a long time to renovate something of this size here in the Turks and Caicos.  This is the inside lower level of the house.  Salt was stored here, waiting for the ships that would take it to the United States.

There are a lot of ruins on Salt Cay.   This next photo is the Government Building.  This is where all the island business of the time was conducted.  You can tell that it was quite an impressive structure.   Now it sits in the tropical sun, slowly rotting away.   We went inside, but the floor was so rotten it was too dangerous to try to walk around.

This is our best friend in the islands, Preacher Stubbs.   He was keeping his good shoes dry while showing us around the island. He was NOT running from the cows.  Preacher is not afraid of cows.  Or much else, either, as far as I can determine.

This is the equivalent of Main street on Salt Cay.   There isn't a lot of traffic these days.

  The salt merchant families had their homes and loading docks on the left side, with the salt drying pens on the right. They could keep track of the slaves without ever leaving the shade.

I don't know what they did for health care back two hundred years ago, I suspect not much other than "bush medicine".  But these days, there's a modern clinic right here on Salt Cay:

A nice place to spend some time, a view of one of  the sea water pools and outside dining area at Jim and Sharon Shafer's Windmills Plantation on Salt Cay.

The view from  the little upstairs porch outside our room our  at Windmills Plantation, looking toward Grand Turk:

This is La Gringa sitting in the restaurant and bar area of Windmills Plantation.

The Shaffers have put together quite a collection of things that wash ashore here.  I wonder if we're included in that description.

We were only here for three days, but we managed to look around.  Preacher knows the island well, and he was a great tour guide.   He took us up to the top of  Taylor Hill to look at the ruins up there.  This was a high spot on the island, where people could keep a lookout for the ships coming to collect the salt.

I noticed that the write up I linked to up above ( and again here ) makes note of how difficult some of these paths can be.   We know first hand just what they're talking about.  

It was worth the climb, though, to get close to these old ruins.

Can you imagine what a house up here with a view like this would cost today?

I'm amazed that this hand laid stone arch is still standing.  It's a testimony to the skills that some of the old stone masons brought with them from Africa.

We hated to leave Salt Cay.  We plan to come back at the first opportunity.  But we had commitments on Providenciales, and wanted to spend at least one day on Grand Turk before heading back across the Columbus Passage.